


champion

by openended



Series: Olivia Shepard [1]
Category: Mass Effect
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-05
Updated: 2013-10-05
Packaged: 2017-12-28 11:34:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 2,283
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/991550
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/openended/pseuds/openended
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Small ficlets for the 10-song fic meme that's been floating around.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. play on (paloma faith)

She closes her eyes tight, so tight fireworks erupt behind her eyelids. She focuses on the pinpricks of light, the designs and patterns that have fascinated her since she was a child and first learned about the trick.

Everything hurts.

Everything hurts and nothing hurts, all at once.

_(forgive the insubordination)_

She opens her eyes again, looks up at the night sky. She thinks she ought to know the patterns in the stars, but they're so different from Mindoir's constellations and she can't even find north. Her breath burns in her chest, each inhale and exhale more painful than before.

She remembers this feeling, remembers it well. It feels like dying.

Her eyes flutter closed, blocking out the starlight, and she knows it'll be permanent this time. It's okay though, she thinks, that there's no coming back from this one. She made a choice, a choice that ended the war, a choice that saved almost everyone. That'll have to be good enough.

_(your boyfriend has an order for you)_

She feels herself start to sink into the black, farther away from the starlight. She doesn't see fireworks anymore, only dark. Everything no longer hurts, just nothing hurts now. She can't remember the last time that nothing hurt. It's nice, though unsettling. Breathing is hard, and so she stops.

_(come back alive)_

_(alive!)_

That word seems important, comes from somewhere outside her memory. She has three moments of energy, stored so deep inside her heart she didn't know about them until now. She gathers all three together, and with one final push she opens her eyes.

And breathes.


	2. pacific rim (ramin djawadi)

Shepard stares out the Mako's windshield at the skyway ahead of them. The radar's so filled with red dots she might as well turn it off for all the help it'll give. She twists in her seat and looks at Garrus behind her, settled in with the guns already. Normally she'd prefer to man the turret and cannon, but as it stands - M35 Makos were not made with krogan or turians in mind. By virtue of being able to sit in the seat, she's driving.

By virtue of driving, though, she gets to pick the music. Wrex and Garrus have both complained about her music choices in the past, but they were also complaining about her driving at the same time (and it's really not her fault that they had to haul ass up a mountain during a blizzard to hunt down some stray mercs). She shuffles through her library on the HUD and finds the right playlist. 

Very particular, curated since she was in boot camp, edited after each mission until near perfection. Simply titled, _Boom_. It's gotten her through more than her fair share of scrapes, and as they reach the first door, she hopes that it'll get her through this one too.

She hits play and drives forward, triggering the door to lift.

Garrus nails the first colossus with the cannon just as the bass kicks in.

It's going to be a good day.


	3. eli's coming (three dog night)

Her shoulders take on a slump after Horizon. After Kaidan.

Garrus knew about them on the SR1, wasn't anyone aboard who didn't; they weren't indiscreet about their relationship, it was just obvious that they cared for each other. She told him once, when she first hauled his ass off Omega, that it was just physical - a need to hold onto another person during their mission of utmost insanity. But the look in her eyes now, a distinctly _human_ mix of regret and betrayal and sadness, tells him the exact opposite.

He spends the better part of a day setting up the cargo bay for his plans. At 0200, when he knows she'll still be awake but most everyone else will be asleep, he steps into the elevator and rides up to her quarters. He hadn't though much past this point; if she doesn't let him in, he'll ride back down and that will be that.

But she lets him in. She's sitting at her desk, reading email, and looks up at him in confusion. The confusion deepens when she sees the rifle in his hand. "Garrus?"

"Set up a shooting range in the cargo bay. Thought you might like the distraction."

She breaks into a smile, and it's genuine. That alone is worth the crap he'll get from the crew for allowing their commanding officer to shoot a gun in a metal ship in the middle of the night.


	4. falling down (oasis)

He didn't realize that he'd been holding his breath until she shakes his hand and welcomes him aboard. His world shifts slightly, clearer now. He exhales and returns her grip.

He goes back to his apartment for a box of gun mods C-Sec doesn't approve of, and a pillow. He doesn't even bother talking to Pallin, simply sends him his resignation notice via omnitool.

Stepping onto the Normandy, for the first time in his life - he feels like he belongs.


	5. bones (ms mr)

There's a rumor going around Omega, whispered in half-shadow. He ignores it. It's a rumor, based on nothing. Someone knows someone who knows someone who knows someone who has a brother who thought he saw something. He has other things to do than focus on rumors, especially rumors like this.

He's spent two years mentally blocking anything with her name on it: news, recruitment ads, war stories. He hears none of it anymore, and he's less stable for it.

By the time it's confirmed, by the time the Citadel and the Alliance know and the story's completely broken the extranet, he's up to his eyeballs in mercs and his bed is being used as ammunition storage. He doesn't hear the confirmation - anyone who could've told him in person is dead, and he isn't answering his omnitool. He's a little busy.

A familiar figure steps into his scope, the shot perfectly lined up. He hesitates, finger on the trigger, his brain trying to convince his eyes that what he's seeing is an hallucination born of not enough sleep and too many stims. But the figure looks real enough, the gait is right, the grip on the pistol even more right. He fires a concussive round and he can feel the glare all the way up in his perch, even through their helmets.

She steps out of his shot and suddenly she's firing, but shooting everyone who had been aiming at him. Might as well let her help. If this is an hallucination, it's a good way to go.

And then suddenly she's standing before him and, spirits, she _looks_ like Shepard. 

She sounds like Shepard and she acts like Shepard and he swears to every deity in known space that she'd better damn well _be_ Shepard, or he's going to raise hell the likes of which the universe has never seen.


	6. the internet is for porn (avenue q)

Shepard breaks into her cider stash and drinks two bottles before she feels buzzed enough to do this particular extranet search. She tilts her head and clicks play on the first video. She makes it ninety seconds before turning it off. 

It's not the porn. She's fine with the porn. She _likes_ porn. It's that this is _Garrus_ and they've always fumbled their way through things _together_ , and looking up human/turian sexual encounters at her desk alone seems wrong.

She sends a message to his omnitool. _How do you feel about a joint research opportunity?_

A reply comes back before she's even closed the extranet vid, paused in a precarious shot. _Two minutes_.

Shepard's into her second six-pack and Garrus is halfway through his bottle of turian brandy and they can't stop laughing. Curiosity got the better of them and they clicked on a link and ended up on a hanar/elcor porn site. Between _this one feels so good_ and _encouragingly, harder_ , they're not sure they've seen anything more hilarious (or disturbing) in their lives.

They're too drunk for anything to happen tonight, but they eventually turn off the vids and the lights and fall asleep together with hope, because there's an entire section of the extranet proving that this is actually _possible_ between them.


	7. broken crown (mumford & sons)

Omega's a shithole. It smells and it's crowded and it looks like it's five seconds away from falling apart at the seams. It's exactly what he needs.

He takes up the vigilante mantle because she taught him well. Taught him to do the right thing even when you're outnumbered, even when it's hard, even when you can't see the end. Even when you don't know what the hell the end looks like. Someone has to clean up Omega, make it at least somewhat habitable for the citizens who can't protect themselves, and no one else is doing it. So he does.

He stalks mercs and hit men to the very depths of Omega, where the maps have run out and it's only a tracking program that allows him to find the surface again. Puts his gun to their head when he's feeling particularly vengeful, lets them beg and offer and deal before he pulls the trigger. On days when he's only just angry, he picks them off from a hidden perch in the shadows above, watches them crumple to the floor, not so formidable when lying in a pool of their own blood.

 _You're gonna get yourself killed, Vakarian_. Her voice, clear as if she were standing right next to him, so clear he has to turn and check to make sure she isn't.

"And?" he says out loud, cleaning his rifle. He's pretty sure he's going nuts, her voice just cements it.

A sigh from her. _Please don't_.

He wonders how to do that. Not get killed here on this cesspool of the galaxy where everyone calls him Archangel and he's not at all interested in correcting them. He laughs harshly and it hangs in his empty apartment. They fought Saren and the geth and it was hard and nearly impossible and he wondered about their success a few times, but he never once worried about getting himself killed. Now he's here on Omega, hopped up on stims half the time just to watch his own six and - 

_That's how_. And her voice disappears.


	8. survivor theme - palau (russ landau)

There's a war on, and the fate of the entire galaxy is in her hands.

But she figures that for an hour a week, she can be unreachable. For an hour a week, she can curl up on the couch with her boyfriend, a beer, and a bowl of popcorn and watch the latest episode of Big Brother: Milky Way.

She has five thousand credits and a shotgun riding on the drell contestant winning the whole thing. Garrus has five thousand credits and a custom rifle scope riding on the volus. But both are up for elimination tonight.

The galaxy can wait.


	9. home (gemma hayes)

Shepard always feels particularly murderous after dealing with the leaders of the known galaxy, ready to say to hell with it and throw them to the wolves and walk away. Hell, she died three years ago, she shouldn't even be here for this. The elevator ride up to her quarters is infuriatingly slow, even though EDI informs her that the elevator travels at precisely the same speed it did this morning.

She takes a deep breath outside her quarters, closes her eyes and reaches her hands over her head. She exhales and bends over, touching her palms to the floor. She stands up and repeats the motion four more times. She isn't quite calm, but she feels less like she's going to yell at her hamster for making hungry noises.

Her door swishes open, and Garrus is sitting at her desk, reading a datapad. Her hamster's eating and so are the fish. She smiles and leans against the wall for a moment, watching him skim the rest of the report.

"Hey," he says, and stands, leaving the datapad behind. "How'd it go?"

She shrugs. "It might not be a bad idea to put them all in a room, lock the door, and set the place on fire." She forces humor into her voice, following a promise to herself to never bring the war into their quarters.

Garrus doesn't buy the humor for a minute, but chuckles anyway and meets her by the fishtank. She settles comfortably against him, resting her cheek on his chest. He holds her to him, her breathing and posture telling him that nothing's wrong - all she wants is a hug. He bows his head, pressing his mouth to the top of her head, and he feels her smile.

In here, things are perfect.


	10. champion (rupaul)

He stands behind her, off to the side, while the Council hears the final evidence against Saren. He stands up a bit straighter when Tevos and Sparatus nod at each other; his spine tingles, feeling like he's about to witness history firsthand. 

"Let's do this," she grins as she passes him, now officially a Spectre. Her eyes sparkle with excitement, and he can see how much she wants to actually bound down the stairs, but she holds it back out of a sense of propriety.

Two years later, he's standing behind her again as she proves to the Council that she's alive and tries to argue that she's not working for Cerberus. She holds herself straight, respectful, but with a hint of the cocky attitude he remembers, just enough to convey that she is who she says she is.

She turns, reinstated, and flashes him an identical grin. "Let's go save the galaxy. Again."

A year later, and hell is falling down around them. With a deep breath, she rolls her shoulders square and looks to him standing next to her. She smiles, the same crooked smile. "Ready?"

"Always."


End file.
